A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on computer systems. A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. In contrast, an enterprise search engine is a search engine to search enterprise documents as opposed to a general web search. In general, search engines retrieve information based on search queries submitted by users. The information that is retrieved by the search engines can depend on exact or proximity matching of search terms or keywords input by the users. Some search engines may rank the search results to decide in which order the results should be presented or displayed to the users. However, common search engines remain agnostic with respect to the use of the search results by the users. Users are left on their own to determine the relevance or use of the search results, for example, for performing tasks that they may have at hand.
Consideration is now being given to directing search results to support users in performing tasks.